Every quarter, WCC staff puts out a survey for the community to evaluate and provide feedback to the High Ranks of each Clan. As part of this survey, we ensure responses are anonymous to allow for people who may otherwise feel they do not have a voice to speak up. Unfortunately, it has come to our attention and observation that this privilege has been severely abused. Not only is this an issue as it is against our code of conduct, but has also escalated to the degree of being genuinely harmful towards our users who hold High Ranks and in some cases can be seen as aggressive harassment.

We want to bring attention to our community about this issue. Staff does take these surveys very seriously, and many of the roleplayers who serve in a High Rank do, too. We do not take the decision to post these comments lightly, but to keep the user base from targeting those who submitted these comments they will ultimately remain unknown. Staff also does not have a way of identifying who it is who submitted these responses, as the survey is built in a way to remain completely anonymous. While we also wish to respect the anonymity of the comments posted in the surveys, we feel that it is also important to share with the community how severe this issue has gotten.

”Warning: Possibly upsetting comments”:

As seen in the above, there are members of our community who feel that it is okay to target individuals in the High Rank survey. This is not okay. Again, it directly violates our Code of Conduct on WCC. Specifically, it violates two rules:
1. Be kind to other players,
2. Do not attempt to circumvent the rules.

In using the anonymity of the survey to post these mean comments, ultimately, these users are circumventing the rule to be kind. All users on this site are human, and as such, deserve base-level kindness. If there are issues with users that must be addressed, members are encouraged and are more than welcome to reach out to a member of Staff to address these concerns. Should this level of harassment continue within our surveys, Staff will be looking into finding out who is responsible for the comments and disciplinary actions will be involved. Additionally, if users cannot show an ability to respect the privilege of anonymous surveys, then Staff will no longer host these surveys to provide feedback to High Ranks and other members.

For those who have concerns about who is allowed to serve in a High Rank, know that Staff are unafraid to step in when there are instances of concern over who has been selected as a prospective High Rank. We have the interest of the community at heart, and as such, one of the roles on the Staff team directly involves auditing members in those positions. Users can view the Staff Duties spreadsheet to see which members of Staff have “High Rank Jury, Judge, and Executioner” as one of their duties to know who are in charge of maintaining our standard of High Ranks.

The purpose of the High Rank survey is, ultimately, to provide feedback to our High Ranks that can be actionable in order to enhance the WCC experience. Constructive criticism is ultimately the goal, and helps the roleplayers who serve in these positions understand what the user base needs from their High Ranks. An example of what constructive criticism should be looks like the following:

• “I think that Mottlestar is doing a good job handling ceremonies and is always on top of their duties! However, I would really like to see Kitty interact with Mottlestar more outside of just her required duties, as I feel that it is hard to have development topics with Mottlestar and other characters doing simpler things that go on in everyday Clan life.”
  
• “Very good at interacting with their clan, but they seem to need frequent reminders to post in ceremonies. It would make things much easier if these reminders needed to not be as often.”
  
• “They are always posting on the site, but seem to be hard to reach to socialize! We love our HRs and want to be able to chat with them and get to know them more!”
  

As has been expressed in the past, our High Ranks genuinely want to improve when there are areas that they are struggling in. Taking the time to express this feedback in ways that give them actionable goals will always provide much better results than simply making a comment like those found in the hidebox. Our community does not deserve this sort of harassment on a survey that is ultimately meant to assist the community in pushing their High Ranks to do better. It will not be tolerated for the survey to be used as means to harass members of our site. Warrior Clan Cats is a forum roleplay in which we seek to be able to enjoy the vibrant community that has existed for over a decade. We know and expect our community to be capable of better.